RIFT turns 7 this year. Players can celebrate with the Carnival of the Ascended which began on March 15, 2018, and will run through April 5, 2018.

Seven years has flown by in the blink of an eye – let’s mark the occasion with all of our traditional Carnival events in Tempest Bay. We welcome all Live server players to grab a piece of 7 Year birthday cake and join the celebrations! Wait up, say Prime server players … Tempest Bay? We haven’t found Tempest Bay Yet! Ahh, very true, though you’ve clearly heard rumors of the fun going on there, like echos from a past life. Likewise, a traveling merchant has heard of this new, far off land called Vigil and is even now packing up his mule train to bring you a taste of Carnival! Look for Winachuck Maguck in Sanctum and Meridian. Yes, he has mastered the arcane art of being in two places at once!

New Carnival items available for event currency include:

A carousel-style Pegasus companion pet named Celeste

Newly designed carnival-style masks

Players who are “feeling bubbly” can apply the new Celebratory or Prismatic weapon rune

Players who want to throw around some virtual coin can use the Golden or Silver rune of Wealth

The Primal Rebirthday Cake has unlimited shelf life

Earn a new Raid Tier 2 Earring for level 70’s (RIFT live, only)

New 7th Anniversary Cape

Available on the RIFT store for credits:

New Wings of the Archfey – “make your own Carnival parade while wearing these beauties”

Brutality is a PVP (player vs player) medieval combat brawler board game. It is designed for 2 to 4 players. The Brutality Kickstarter has 19 days to go (at the time I am writing this post). Its goal was $42,000, and it currently has $69,969. It was funded in 29 hours.

Brutality comes with 8 figures, 8 Hero Cards, 56 Relic Cards, 10 Artifact Cards, more than 60 Hazard Tiles, and a Game Board. It appears that some of the Kickstarter stretch goals have been reached, and this could result in additional Heroes being added to the game box.

To win, your team must destroy the other team using brutal attacks, relics, artifacts, and environmental hazards. Each team selects 2 Heroes, each with their own special attacks and moves.

Relic cards change up the game in ways that can be beneficial for you, or harmful to your enemies. Artifact cards have powerful effects with cooldowns. The Environmental Hazards can be used like traps or weapons against the other team’s Heroes.

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a technology from Google that makes your pages load faster in mobile browsers. AdPlugg can now be used to serve ads into your AMP formatted pages.

AdPlugg can schedule, rotate, and report on the ads that appear in your AMP pages. This might be useful for those who want to include ads on their website, and it could potentially get your website more traffic from mobile users.

The standard way to implement AMP is to have two page urls, one regular one and an AMP one. Mobile browsers are told to use the AMP version. Pages that adhere to AMP standard often load almost twice as fast as a regular web page. This is due to a simplified structure, improved cachability and the elimination (or deferment) of slow moving resources.

AMP points out that it has strict standards regarding what can appear on an AMP page. This is to ensure fast load times. In order for an element to appear on an AMP page, it needs to be an officially approved AMP extension.

AdPlugg is now an official AMP extension and a provider of amp ads. AMP has also integrated with the AMP WordPress plugin from Automattic to make it easy to place ads into your WordPress powered AMP pages.

There is a helpful step-by-step list on the AMP website that walks you through how to make this work. It also has a brief description on how to add tags manually or programatically for people who are not using WordPress. Interestingly, AMP has a link you can click to see what the AMP version of their post about AdPlugg would look like on a mobile device.

Wikispaces has been around since 2005. It is used by educators, companies, and individuals across the globe. Those who are currently using Wikispaces need to find an alternative soon. Wikispaces has announced that it is time for them to say farewell.

Over the last twelve months we have been carrying out a complete technical review of the infrastructure and software we use to serve Wikispaces users. As part of the review, it became apparent that the required investment to bring the infrastructure and code in line with modern standards is very substantial. We have explored all possible options for keeping Wikispaces running but have had to conclude that it is no longer viable to continue to run the service in the long term. So, it is with no small degree of nostalgia, that we will begin to close down later this year.

Wikispace is going to undertake a phased shutdown approach. This is being done to regulate the system load on the export tool as users depart from Wikispaces. If you have stuff on Wikispaces that you want to keep, it appears you should begin making use of the export tool as soon as possible.

It’s the Wearable Technology Show in London, England today and tomorrow, so GNC was in attendance to check out some of the latest developments in the space. I was last here in 2016, so it’s interesting to see what’s changed (and what hasn’t) in the last two years. The event isn’t anything like the size of CES and there are few household names, but there are plenty of entrepreneurs and startups. I’ll be posting full interviews later but for now, here’s a selection from day 1 (and 13,000 steps).

e-textiles were very much in evidence, with sensors and electronics embedding into fabrics by Nottingham Trent University.

There was a working fabric keyboard using silver based yarn from Statex.

Tinker Designs has developed a prototype smart shoe that incorporates artisan craft with modern electronics.

As expected, there were plenty of wrist-worn devices. WITgrip had a prototype wrist mount to hold a bigger screen in a more ergonomic position.

Laevo demonstrated an exoskeleton for workers who repeatedly have to bend over or kneel down. I tried it on and it works as advertised.

Also for workers is the ProGlove which incorporates a barcode scanner on the back of the glove to avoid repetitive picking up and putting down of scanners.

Broadcom acquisitions of Qualcomm got smashed today by the President over National Security concerns. Personally, I think this was the right decision. Although this type of order by the executive branch is rare, the chip industry inside the United States needs protecting after all are we going to buy defense chips from the Chinese or off-shore companies. Nope.. Plus all the news of the day.

Twitch updated its Community Guidelines and those changes went into effect on March 5, 2018. Twitch put together an FAQ update that provides some additional explanation about the Community Guidelines changes.

Twitch defines hateful conduct as: any content or activity that promotes, encourages, or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment, or violence based on the following characteristics, and is strictly prohibited:

Race, ethnicity, or national origin

Religion

Sex, Gender, or Gender Identity

Sexual Orientation

Age

Disability or Medical Condition

Physical Characteristics

Veteran Status

Streamers need to be aware of that definition because Twitch is going to hold streamers accountable for the content of their stream.

As a streamer, you are responsible for the content on your stream. Twitch asks you to make a good faith effort to moderate interactive elements of your stream, such as setting a word filter or a notification delay to give yourself a chance to moderate incoming notifications.

Twitch suggests that streamers enable AutoMod (which can be found in your settings), build a moderation team, or utilize the third party tools to moderate their stream. Twitch also suggests streamers temporarily disable or mute any unmoderated interactive elements such as text-to-speech when the streamer steps away from their computer.

Twitch is also moderating off-Twitch conduct. To clarify, Twitch says it is not going to actively monitor other websites or services for violations of the Twitch Community Guidelines. However, they recognize that “harassment against Twitch community members can sometimes originate from off-Twitch conduct”.

As such, Twitch will allow people to report harassment and submit links to evidence with their report. Twitch’s moderation team will only take action if: the links provided are verifiable, the content can be directly tied to the reported Twitch user, the target of harassment is another Twitch users, group of Twitch users, or Twitch employees, or the moderation team determines the conduct violates Twitch’s policies.

Reuters announced the launch of a new wire service devoted to coverage of esports. It is available now to Reuters News Agency customers. To me, this suggests that esports has become mainstream enough for large news providers to dedicate time to covering it.

The Reuters Esports Wire is designed for easy use across print, digital and social media, and provides unique, in-depth coverage targeted towards a younger demographic. Coverage of esports will be delivered with the same detail and analysis as any major sports league, with content provided through a partnership with sports text provider Field Level Media.

The Reuters Esports Wire features global coverage of the competitive gaming industry, including breaking news, player acquisitions, sponsorship deals and coverage of the largest esports tournaments.

Some of the esports tournaments and leagues that Reuters Esports Wire will cover include: Overwatch, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, DOTA 2, NBA2K and select others. It is possible for publishers to request a free, no-obligation trial of Reuters Esports Wire now.

Josh Duboff, Reuters Senior Product Manager, Sports & Entertainment Verticals, said: “Esports has grown increasingly popular around the world and demand for coverage of the sport has never been stronger. This offers us a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of offering coverage of the sport to global media customers as they see a rising interest in the competitive gaming industry from their audiences.”

Palladium Books held a Kickstarter to produce Robotech RPG Tactics. A total of 5,342 backers pledged $1,442,312 to bring the project to life. Robotech RPG Tactics is a tabletop strategy game that expands on the popular Palladium role playing game. Palladium was intending to create miniatures as game pieces. Unfortunately, things did not work out as planned.

President of Palladium Books, Kevin Siembieda, posted an update on the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter on February 27, 2018. In it, he announced that they will be unable to produce some of the rewards that were offered in the Kickstarter, and explained why.

So it is with sadness and tremendous heartbreak that I announce that, despite our best efforts, we are unable to produce the Robotech RPG Tactics Wave Two rewards. Moreover, after proudly carrying the legacy of Robotech in the role-playing games medium for 30 years, our license has expired and is not being renewed.

To get the full story of what happened, I recommend you read the Kickstarter update. In short, Palladium Books decided to contract with Ninja Division/Soda Pop Miniatures. In addition to running the Kickstarter, NinjaDivision/Soda Pop Miniatures would also select the manufacturer/broker in China, choose the manufacturing process, choose the type of plastic, create the game, and hire talented sculptors and artists.

Palladium developed the game rules and provided Ninja Division’s sculptors and artists with reference materials to help them design the miniatures just right. A big problem occurred when Palladium learned that the 3D sculpts from the sculptors were not compatible with the tooling process the manufacturer would be using. From there, things spiraled and the costs to produce everything Palladium intended to became too high.

Kevin Siembieda posted that they cannot produce the Wave Two rewards. He has offered Wave One rewards in exchange for the unrealized Wave Two rewards – and points out that people will have to pay for shipping. There have been a few more updates since the original announcement, and those who spent money on the Kickstarter might want to take a look at those.